Iron
Gate - Dolphin Inn
(Written
by Wayne Anthony & Richard Felix)
This is Derby's oldest public house, dating back to around 1530. Of course,
due to its great antiquity, it has various ghosts associated with it including
a blue lady who walks through the old lath and plaster walls. She has
been seen by many customers in the pub and also in the tea rooms upstairs.
The most intriguing part of the Dolphin is its 18th-century extension
on the left-hand side of the building in Full Street. This was not always
part of the Dolphin, being originally a doctor's house.
In the 18th century, it was customary for doctors to have bodies delivered to their homes for the furtherance of medical science. Part of the sentence of execution in those days was that afterwards, the body of the criminal would be delivered to 'ye surgeons' for dissection'. Many condemned prisoners were more in fear of the dissection then the death sentence.
Before the introduction of the new drop, around 1760, the victim was delivered to the hangman on a cart. The executioner then placed the halter around the victim's neck and the cart was driven away, leaving the condemned man swinging. it could take anything up to 20 minutes for the person to die of slow strangulation from the weight of their own body, unless, of course, the executioner happened to be feeling particularly generous, in which case he would climb to the top of the scaffold or tree and put both feet on the hanging person's shoulders and push down, or with his assistant, take a leg each - and this is where the saying 'pull the other leg' comes from - and pull down, thus tightening the rope around the neck and hastening the end.
Because of the length of time it sometimes took for the accused to die, some who were hanged and then delivered to the surgeons in the Shire Hall in St Mary's Gate, woke up on the dissecting slab.
These poor wretches would be taken off and placed in a corner where a careful eye was kept upon them to see if they would later die or recover A particular incident of this kind apparently happened in the cellar under the doctor's house, which is now part of the Dolphin.
One morning, so we are led to believe, our doctor came eagerly down into the cellar after a body had been delivered. He pulled the body on to a table and ripped the shroud from it, only to find life still present. No one knows what happened - whether the doctor died from shock; whether the person died; or the doctor in fact plunged his scalpel into the body; or even if the person recovered - but many bodies were dissected in that cellar under the Dolphin, and to this day it is haunted by a poltergeist which turns the taps of the beer kegs off in that part of the cellar.
Because of the unearthly
atmosphere, two members of staff normally go down together, as no one
wishes to venture there alone.
Dolphin Inn, Iron Gate
